Canned Acoustica Compiles Cornucopia of Local Clips

Hank Schyma of Southern Backtones at Canned Acoustica II in March 2011

Canned Acoustica, the popular "unplugged"-style local concerts that over six installations have raised both money and food for a variety of charities, has put the final touches (for now) on its YouTube channel, offering local music fans an easy place to browse through intimate and sometimes unconventional performances by many of Houston's top artists.

Monday night, Houston promoter and Canned Acoustica partner Mark C. Austin finished uploading final edits of selected performances from the series' two most recent editions, bringing the grand total of videos on the page to 36. Overall, the CA YouTube channel compiles clips from the second show in March 2011 through the sixth and most recent, which was held in September 2012.

Footage of the first Canned Acoustica, featuring 12 performers in December 2010 at Warehouse Live's Green Room, remains on the YouTube channel of one of Austin's Canned Acoustica partners, Sugarhill Studios audio engineer Josh Applebee. (The other partner is David Garcia of LD Systems, who handles sound and lighting during the CA concerts.)

Lee Alexander

Austin says Houston-based video/multimedia production company Adorable Creative was instrumental in helping him finish this latest batch of videos. So far Canned Acoustica has raised close to two tons of food for the Houston Food Bank, he adds, as well as donated to other causes such as a Japanese tsunami-relief fund administered by a Rice University professor and a supply drive to help out a local school that was literally running low on pencils and paper.

A fair amount of donations are themselves required to make these concerts happen, from Warehouse Live's space and staff to LD systems' equipment. But beyond a charitable enterprise, Austin says the concerts are designed to allow local music fans the chance to attend a show "not particularly for the social aspects."

"Throughout the night, we encourage patrons to remain quite during the performances 'because we are taping,' but also because we want them to really experience a show and not just talk to their friends the whole time.

"We think we've been successful there as well," he adds. "[We get] tons of comments on how intimate and amazing the performances were afterwards."